Week 48/49: InTune, WW2 and Winter
November 23 – December 6, 2025
For my second round of weeknotes I managed to skip a week, the pace of life I suppose and building up the writing habit. My notes this past two weeks felt more sparse, it is a work in progress.
Continued during TV watching time preparing my✱Forever Notes✱ style index card dividers as part of my archiving. It’s not fancy or flashy writing the date on 366 cards, but only needs to be done once!
Office 365 InTune continued to haunt me these past two weeks, I hit a wall with two systems in a row where Windows 11 won’t reset, cloud download has no impact, the usual DISM and SFC commands had no impact, and the systems even say on console that systemreset command does not exist...back to the drawing board as our staff are work from home, so USB based re-installs are out! (And adding InTune to the machines as-is with our MSP built image has been temperamental...but is likely the only route)
I shifted my work notes and workflow back to eMacs (on Windows), because after wandering elsewhere, it is still what works best for me, mainly with Org-Mode, plus Org-Journal for daily notes, and Org-Agenda to pull it all together. I keep my Org directory on my work OneDrive, and on this return, added a pair of 365 Power Automate jobs to:
Twelve hours before a meeting starts, add well formatting meeting details to my Inbox.org file, including proper date and time stamp to keep Org-Agenda happy.
Watch my mailbox for e-mails of support tickets assigned to me, and write those details to my Inbox.org file.
For the previously mentioned FiiO Echo Mini, I didn’t make much progress on my playlists, but it’s moving up my priority list, as I really want to use this little player daily with the better IEMs purchased with it.
Oh, and Winter arrived in full, still only a few inches deep (yes, inches in Canada...our weird mix of metric and imperial is a whole post on its own!), but enough to break out the snowshoes to start packing some trails.
Reading
Not a huge volume of reading this past week, but I managed at least better consistency than in the past:
- Daily Stoic: 366 Meditations – Continued through most of the June pages, with just a few to go. From this weeks reading notes, the one that stood out:
Calm is contagious. (Navy SEALs) Instill calm — not by force, but by example. – A good example for what has served me well in my IT career, be the calm in the storm.
Your Head Is A Houseboat – This arrived near the end of these two weeks of notes, so I have just started to read it, but I am enjoying what I’ve seen so far. I have followed Struthless videos on YouTube for a few years, so this was on my list since it was released.
Mastering eMacs – There was a decent brief discount on this, so I finally picked it up, which is partially was pushed me back to my eMacs workflow for career work. The difference compared to previous times I used it, is this time I’m trying to learn eMacs keys, instead of going straight to evil mode and VIM keybindings!
Gaming
Gaming this past two weeks was focused fully on the Switch, play several full length rounds of a few Mario Party games with my wife, none of which I won...
Mario Party: Jamboree
We had a great couple games in Jamboree, all 30 turn long games with two AI players. Enjoyed time in the Mall course, then Race Track course, and finally later in the week, the Old West (Train) course. None of them disappoint.
Mario Party Superstars
We had all but forgot about the second Mario Party game that came to the switch. We were aiming to play Super Mario Party (with all the crazy allies), but the ‘Virtual Game Card’ was giving us issues, so we ended up having a blast on Superstars with Woodsy Woods.
Movie & TV
I don’t know to what consistency I’ll keep this section, but currently I sometimes capture what I’ve watched, in which case it has a place.
Grand Tour
I continued some fun re-watching of Grand Tour, closing in on the final episode that I have yet to see. But worked through Scandi Flick, Euro Crash, and most of Sand Job (not quite done). Among that set, given how much snow I live in through the winter (at how much I grew up in), I have a strong preference for the antics of Scandi Flick.
Ice Pilots: NWT
Initially as background while working via one of the Roku live channels, I ended up being drawn into a set of episodes I had not seen before, all from mid-Season 6 (last season) when in 2015 they helped do a re-enancment/remembrance D-Day Jump from one of Buffalo Airs planes that was actually in D-Day dropping paratroopers. It was great fun to watch!
Band of Brothers
Inspired of course from the Ice Pilots episodes above, in my evenings and note taking time, I rapidly worked through a re-watch of Band of Brothers, making through episodes one through seven. That series never fails to be good to watch.
Around the Web
Articles & Blogs
I clearly watched a little too much television the last week or two, so while I read a few short articles captured in my Instapaper (pushed to my Kindle), I don’t have anything noteable... time to work on that.
Videos
proof you were here: The Ash Files – This was a neat video essay, really covering the modern difference of digitally capturing a million things, with no organization and likely no one else to ever see them if not made physical. The line that caught my attention the most: > “Capturing a moment takes you out of living that very moment.”
Six Habits That Make Life Feel Lighter: Seve – Sunny Kind Journey – For the past year I have really been drawn to minimalism (not the extreme own nothing type), as portrayed by creators like Seve. As I’ve found with all of his content, this one had several solid reminders, these are a few to close this week:
“Don’t make every problem your responsibility.” (To solve)
“Priorities that live only in our words aren’t really priorities.” (They are wishes)
“Clarity comes from action, not before it.” (Small steps, just start!)
That about wraps it up for this second set of weeknotes, granted it spans over two weeks and I’m still posting a bit later than planned as life became busy. I am going to keep working on my notes and consistency, as I enjoy this process.